International Ladino singer Sarah Aroeste recently teamed up with the Jewish community of Mumbai to create Baylamos, a musical celebration of Simchat Torah. Team Be’chol Lashon spoke to Aroeste and her Indian collaborator, Ednna Samuel, on how the colorful partnership came about. Read here.

Listen as Sarah speaks with the Yiddish Book Center about her family's Sephardic roots in Greece and Macedonia, and how she'll be bringing her contemporary style of Ladino to the Yidstock festiival July 14-15th, 2018.

Sarah writes an essay, Turkish Delight: The Sephardic Immigrant Experience in Fiction, in which she compares her own family experience with that of the protagonist in Shalach Manot's recent novel, His Hundred Years, a Tale. Read the essay here.

"[Aroeste's] new 10-song release begins with "Buena Semana" as you are introduced to Sarah's beautiful vocals. While you may not understand all of the lyrics, you will still get wrapped up in her voice." Read more here!

Lilith Magazine

"[Aroeste] has created an eclectic collection that combines elements of Bhaṅgṛā, rap, cabaret, merengue and even country....We talked with Sarah Aroeste to find out why she wanted to do a Ladino Holiday album, and why she feels called to save this fading language." Read full piece here!

"As Yiddish has had a renaissance of sorts in the last two decades, so, too, is Ladino having its moment. But we need to seize the opportunity before it is too late." Read Sarah Aroeste's full Op-ed here.

Ora de Despertar (Time to Wake Up) is Aroeste's first all-original Ladino children's album. Here, she's supported by a stellar group of musicians, including renowned Israeli composer and producer Shai Bachar. These lighthearted songs celebrate the simple joys of childhood, including the ebullient opening title track. Read more here...

"Musician and songwriter Sarah Aroeste has released an album titled Ora de Despertar (Time to Wake Up). It’s a collection of original Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) songs for children. Aroeste developed the album inspired by her own children. Her intention is that other children will have fun while they learn about the ancient Ladino culture. The songs are catchy and playful, and educational as well."

"Sarah Aroeste’s recently released album [Ora de Despertar] is exactly the kind of music parents of young children look for and toddlers love: catchy, easy-to-sing melodies, simple repetitive lyrics inspired by the child’s everyday world, and dollops of humor and surprise.

What sets this album apart is that the songs are in Ladino..." Read full article here!

"Inspiration doesn’t always have a practical application. But it’s nice when it does.

And so it was for musician, mom and self-styled cultural ambassador Sarah Aroeste, whose latest album came to be because she wanted some music to play for her daughter that would celebrate her family’s specific cultural background." Read full article here!

"Sarah Aroeste is one of those people who seem utterly fascinating. She’s a mom and Ladino musician who recently released her fourth album “Ora de Despertar,” or Time to Wake Up. In her music, she explores her connection between her Sephardic roots in Greece and her passion for music with the Sephardic musical traditions in Ladino..." Read more here.

"Over the years, I've seen and heard a lot of family music albums written in foreign tongues that were unfamiliar, yet still managed to snag the interest of a young audience. Recently, news of a Ladino family music album by Sarah Aroeste hit my radar, but the first thing was that I had no idea what Ladino actually meant..." Read more.

"It was not until she was already on her way to adulthood, that singer Sarah Aroeste discovered the connection between her Sephardic roots in Greece and her love of music with the Sephardic musical traditions in Ladino. Becoming a mother for the first time, she did not want her daughter to wait as to learn to love Ladino music. Not finding kid-friendly Ladino music, she did what any singer song-writer would do, she began to write her own!" Read more...

"When Sarah Aroeste sings, native Spanish speakers may wonder if her pronunciation is off. She might say "hijo," (son) pronouncing the h, and transpose the r and d in "tarde" (afternoon) so that it sounds like "tadre." It's a comment Aroeste has heard before and makes her laugh because the former opera performer is a Ladino singer..." Read more here.

"Although American, Sarah Aroeste has captured the exotic sounds of her deeper roots in Spain and Macedonia. She has done a great job of bringing in classic Judeo-Spanish tradition to up tempo, powerful modern music....And you have to like an album named for a woman who fought the Spanish Inquisition. This record is on my ‘replay often’ pile."

Sarah's music is featured as an example of how to keep Ladino culture alive today...listen here as Catalina Maria Johnson from Chicago Public Radio's Beat Latino talks about Latin Roots: Judeo-Iberian music.

"Sarah Aroeste [is] a Manhattan-based contemporary artist who sings in Ladino, the common name given to Judaeo-Spanish which is rarely heard these days. Aroeste takes the language and the music still further on her third album, ‘Gracia’. You’re welcome." Read more here.

Click here to listen to a program on "The Spanish Jews- Yesteday and Today", featuring Sarah Aroeste and some of the leading experts on Sephardic culture as they discuss the state of contemporary Ladino around the globe.

"Aroeste has three albums to her name. The first two were filled with traditional Sephardic standards, but her latest, "Gracia" (2012), features a number of original compositions. She ably blends rock, jazz and pop elements into her work.... "I just think it's so important for us to know where we come from, especially in this hyperglobalized world," Aroeste said. "I think people really do want to connect with their histories, with their past. Ladino is my way to do that." " Read more here.

"Sarah Aroeste sings in Ladino, a language she lovingly keeps alive and her lyrics concern weighty issues about human rights. The opening title track tells of Dona Gracia Naci who saved Jewish families from the Inquisition in the 15th century. It's a fiery rock song with a gorgeous lead vocal.... It's a wonderful album that deserves all the attention it can get."

Give Aroeste high marks for boldness and daring to be different... the [tracks] that combine aggressive drive with sweeter textures that are well served by Aroeste’s girlish voice (“Ensuenyo Te Vi,” “Las Estreyas”) are sincerely absorbing.

The dark beauty of Sarah Aroeste’s new album of original compositions and traditional Ladino songs captures the spirited nature of Sefardic music infused with a sultry blend of experimental, feminist, rock and Mediterranean sounds... Aroeste’s passion flows through every song about memory, family, marriage, loss and hope.

For Ladino Musicians, World’s A Stage: Artists Are Forging a Global Sephardi Culture.

Vocalists Sarah Aroeste, Mor Karbasi and Françoise Atlan will perform at the inaugural Gibraltar World Music Festival in the time-formed Cueva de San Miguel, or Saint Michael’s Cave, a labyrinth of limestone caverns in the Rock of Gibraltar. They will be joined by the band Ofir, and are billed together as the Sephardic Divas. Such a performance would have been unimaginable only a decade ago. Back then, Aroeste remembers, Ladino music, also known as Judeo-Spanish music, was just a shadow of a spirited klezmer scene packing venues throughout New York...

Sephardic Divas in Concert! Gibraltar Magazine talks to Yan Delgado, festival organizer of the inaugural Gibraltar World Music Festival, about Sarah Aroeste and the "Sephardic Divas" selected to kick off the festival.

Latin music that breaks barriers and pushes boundaries. An episode of NPR's Alt.Latino that explores several cutting edge Latin artists, including Sarah Aroeste, who are "united by commitment to inventiveness and unmistakable soul."

Sarah Aroeste speaks with Israel National News' "Israel Beat Jewish Music Podcast" host Ben Bresky about her heroine Dona Gracia, the history of the Sephardic Jewish community during the Holocaust, and the thriving Israeli music scene...

Aroeste’s CD contains both original and traditional songs. Yes, someone writing new songs in Ladino! The CD’s title song, “Gracia,” is a tribute to her ancestors and Dona Gracia Naci, a medieval Sephardic businesswoman and great community leader. The song contains a vocal sample from a 1971 Gloria Steinem speech. Ladino as a vehicle for roots and feminism.

On Gracia, the classically trained Sarah Aroeste is joined by musicians from the USA, Israel, Morocco, Spain, Uruguay, Colombia and Russia. Together, they give new life to traditional wedding songs, love ballads, and also contribute new original material...Highlights of the album include the Flamenco and Middle Eastern-infused fusion piece ‘Scalerica de Oro/Dodi Yarad’, the dreamy ‘Tu Portret’, the passionate ‘El Leon Ferido’ and the global electronica dance grooves of ‘Scalerica de Oro (DMD Remix)’... With Gracia, Sarah Aroeste injects fresh new sounds into the ancient Ladino music.

[Sarah Aroeste] has spent a decade expanding upon contemporary Ladino music. Classically trained and pop-savy, Sarah mixes flamenco and pan-Mediterranean melodies on her new record. Her emphatic vocals are backed by strings and guitars in a well produced set. Listen to the fiery passion in “Gracia,” the title track from the album...and get your hands on a copy of Gracia today.

[The] conflict between history and the now is dramatically enacted in Sarah Aroeste’s music. Not only does Aroeste labor in an idiom that dates back to the 15th century, but she does so for an audience that doesn’t even speak the language.....[Gracia] is the strongest case around for the ongoing relevance of Ladino music.

Few albums take risks as successfully as on Gracia, and Sarah was successful with both her purposes, making an album as a spokeswoman for the minority woman unafraid to do what she feels is right, and to combine a million influences into a cohesive album. If you’re into world music with the New York flare, Sarah Aroeste is for you.

It is hard to go further off of any beaten path than with Sarah Aroeste. Not that her music is something you’ve never heard before. It is different, but it falls pretty easily into the pop/rock category. What makes this artist rare is that she sings a Judeo-Spanish language called Ladino. And her voice is really something.

Sarah Aroeste’s album Gracia is a musical and poetic amalgamation she has accumulated on her search for her musical roots and family heritage....These songs serve as a foundation of how serious and studious this music can be. There are elements of flamenco, rock, opera, and Latin popular music, blended into the selections on “Gracia,” in which Aroeste takes long dormant traditional and originally inspired poetic works and twists them into a fresh contemporary sound.

With “Gracia,” due out this month, Aroeste has landed Ladino solidly in a place that parallels the most cutting-edge work in Yiddish and klezmer by bands like Golem and the Klezmatics. Whether she is dealing with traditional melodies and lyrics, or original compositions, Aroeste makes music that jumps out of the speakers with the sound and impact of a new album by Shakira or Madonna, with both of whom Aroeste has more than a little in common in terms of far-ranging vision – vocals that soar above dance floor rhythms and an intuitive understanding of how ethnic music can have a widespread appeal going far beyond an insular audience...“Gracia” is Aroeste’s creation from top to bottom. It’s a reflection of her musical and cultural vision, and more than anything, of her powerful and expressive voice. So much of Jewish history and contemporary Jewish experience speaks through her; what’s different, here, is that it speaks literally and figuratively in a language and accent that you rarely, if ever, have heard. With “Gracia,” that’s about to change!

If the unique qualities of Ladino culture and music ever find an audience beyond scholars and traditionalists, it might be because of artists like Sarah Aroeste. Like some unlikely cross between Yasmin Levy and Alanis Morissette, the American born Aroeste finds deeply personal meaning and not a small amount of catharsis in these ancient songs...

We thought Ladino, the Castillian Spanish & Hebrew hybrid, was near to a dead language and then artist Sarah Aroeste appears and it’s alive again, very alive. Aroeste has been writing and singing in Ladino for the past 10 years, which is quite a feat for the young songstress... [H]er third album, Gracia—a mesmerizing mix of feminist, experimental and Mediterranean-infused original Ladino songs.

When Madonna was doing her kaballah thing, she should have taken a side tour into the world of Ladino music, a kind of feminist protest music of Sephardic Jewish women that is pretty mind blowing as it's fueled by wild women that aren't afraid of being sexy. Aroeste keeps it traditional, brings it into the present and then uses contemporary mash up techniques to keep it pulsating from the streets. Often sounding like an opium/belly dance dream when it's not sounding like the video music channel they play in casual Indian restaurants, this is a mind blowing set that the open eared world beater will play for all their friends and try to make them believers. Hot stuff.

Global Notes: Retrofitting traditional sounds for a modern fit

On this week’s Global Notes, [we] take a look at bands that play “retrofitted” music. These groups adapt older music and apply contemporary technology to bring long-standing musical traditions into the 21st century.

Songstress Sarah Aroeste brings a 500-year-old tradition to the present with spoken-word flavored, rock–tinged versions of tunes sung in the ancient Judeo-Spanish language...

Sarah Aroeste is selected as a Top-10 Finalist in the prestigious international "Festiladino" competition of original Ladino music. As shown on live Israeli National TV, Sarah performs with the Jerusalem Symphony an original Ladino song written with Roberto Rodriguez. Click here to watch the video.

The Jerusalem Post

[Sarah Aroeste's] sophomore album, “Puertas,” is an argument about Ladino music’s future. Updating Sephardic sounds and Mediterranean melodies with rock flourishes, the group gives “Puertas” a low-fi garage vibe. The marriage of Ladino lyrics to this modern sensibility drives the album forward — showing that the past can not only infiltrate, but also add meaning to the present.

Star Ledger

Vicki Hyman

September 06, 2005

When Spain expelled its Jews half a millennium ago, some took with them a Castilian dialect called Ladino. Five hundred years later, Ladino is spoken only in small pockets of the world, mainly Israel, and rarely as a first language.

From the first notes that sounded, there was no question that Chicagoans were hearing music of the highest artistic level...[Yet the festival’s] cultural agenda seemed almost modest alongside the reach of singer/songwriter Sarah Aroeste, who finds inspiration in the ancient poetry of Ladino...